Clause 173
Banking Bill
12:00 pm
Ian Pearson (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform; Dudley South, Labour)
I beg to move amendment No. 19, in clause 173, page 89, line 11, after ‘recognised’, insert ‘inter-bank’.
The amendment is a technical correction intended to provide consistency across part 5 of the Bill. Clause 170 provides for the Treasury to make a recognition order in respect of an inter-bank payment system, thereby bringing it within the Bank of England’s remit as formal overseer. Clause 173 provides for the revocation of a recognition order made under clause 170. The amendment makes it clear that the Treasury must consider requests by the operator of a recognised inter-bank payment system only in relation to the recognition order made under clause 170(1) and not one made, for example, under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000.
By way of example, clearing houses or investment exchanges may be recognised by the FSA under part 18 of the 2000 Act. Such recognised clearing houses and investment exchanges are then subject to the FSA’s regulatory regime, and those recognised clearing houses or investment exchanges might contain embedded payment systems that do not meet the recognition criteria in clause 171 and would not, therefore, be recognised by the Treasury under clause 170(1). In such circumstances, it would be inappropriate for the Treasury to consider requests for revoking a recognition made by the FSA. That is why we believe this technical amendment to be necessary.